Probe, what happened when Mark Zuckerberg met the senate. Would you be comfortable sharing with us the name of the hotel you stayed in last night . No. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes. On a day in which the white house claims the president has the power to fire special counsel Robert Mueller, tonight weve learned another previously unreported occasion this past december when the president tried to do just that. Fire the man conducting the criminal investigation into his campaign, his personal business, members of his family and the president himself. Its an investigation that yesterday led to coordinated fbi raids on the office and residences of one of the president s closest and longest serving associates his attorney Michael Cohen. Now today multiple reports coming in from nearly every direction the president is once again mulling the option of firing mueller or perhaps someone else at the Justice Department. According to federal regulations the special counsel may be disciplined or removed from office only by the personal action of the attorney general. But according to the white house, the president has been advised he, he can terminate Robert Mueller all by himself. Does he believe he has the power to fire special counsel Robert Mueller . Certainly believes he has the power to do so. Most legal experts believe he would have to order Deputy Attorney general rosenstein to fire mueller and corefuse. I know a number of individuals in the Legal Community and including at the department of justice said he has the power to do so but i dont have any further announcements. They told me, ive asked. They said its rosenstein oversees is the special counsel and only he has the power to fire the special counsel. Again, weve been advised that the president certainly has the power to make that decision. I cant go anything beyond that. Weve been advised the president certainly has the power to make the decision. To be clear, the warrants that were executed against cohen yesterday were not as far as we can tell from the available reporting related directly to the russia probe as far as we know now. They appear to be part of a separate investigation referred by the special counsel to federal prosecutors in new york. But if it the raid provoked the president to take some kind of action to stop mueller, it would not be the first time hes tried to do so. Remember a few months ago the New York Times reported the president gave the order directly to fire mueller last june and backed off only after his White House Counsel Don Mcgahn apparently threatened to quit rather than carry out the order. Tonight, a new report from the times. Again, that he tried to do it just in december. Telling advisers that muellers investigation to to be shut down following reports that a bank he did business with had been subpoenaed. The president once again backed down after it became clear that those reports were misleading. But last night during a public in response to the cohen raid, he did not rule out giving it another shot. Why dont you just fire mueller. Why dont i just fire mueller . Well, i think its a disgrace whats going on. Well see what happens. Its a sad situation. Again, they found nothing. And in finding nothing, thats a big statement. If you know, the person who is in charge of the investigation, you know all about that, deputy rosenstein, Rod Rosenstein. As you know, he also signs the fisa warrant. So Rod Rosenstein who is in charge of this signed a fisa warrant and he also he also signed a letter that was essentially saying to fire james comey. Now, according to the fox news radio producer who asked that question, you heard shouted about mueller, the president mouthed thank you at him as he was ushered out. In the same clip you may have noticed the president quickly pivoted from mueller to Deputy Attorney general rosenstein. Nobody asked. The president just brought him up. That was no coincidence. According to the New York Times reporting the president s tirade last night copied in private at the white house as he fumed whether he should fire rosenstein before the times broke the news today it was rosenstein himself who was the one who personally signed off on the decision to raid cohens office. Mike the schmidt is one of the reporter whos broke that story as well as tonights breaking news the president sought to fire mueller a second time in december. Michael, im trying to get a clearer sense of what exactly happened in december as your reporting indicates . Into there were several reports at the time that a there was a mueller subpoena that had been sent to Deutsche Bank for records directly related to trump. Now, if you remember, trump talked last summer about a socalled red line, an area that he said mueller should not be looking at. Thats finances outside of russia. So trump sees this, sees this report and he loses it. He gets very angry pop we talk a lot how angry he got but he got angry again this time and really wanted to get rid of mueller. He said it was time to end the investigation. What happened was that his lawyers who know where his Bank Accounts are and where his things are realized that the report was wrong that there was nothing to it. The reports were actually ultimately corrected. But this was this instance. And as we know, firing mueller is not just something that is front of mind for the president just now. This is something he has thought about as far as back as may when mueller was appointed. Hes obviously also thought since then about firing sessions and firing rosenstein. The other big incident that we know about where trump really walked up to the line of firing mueller was last june asking account White House Counsel Don Mcgahn to call the Justice Department to tell Rod Rosenstein it was time for mueller to go because had he several conflict of interest issues. It was only after mcgahn threatened to resign that the president backed down on that. I want to go back to the red line. Its something that ive wrestled with how seriously to take that red line. That was your phrase in an interview with the president an audio interview we have audio of. You said the word red line and the president says yes it, didnt sound definitive to me. Are you convinced he does consider that a red line. Like probably a lot of red lines this one may be a bit faulty but i dont know. Look, we were trying to get the president to give us a sense how he saw this investigation. How he saw mueller. What was muellers mandate . And we pushed him on it. We pushed him really hard if you could hear in the audio. We tried to pin him down what was okay and what wasnt okay. Because we wanted to have a guide as we looked at this and moved along to see where mueller sort of fell in if the president s thoughts. Now, we knew at the time that we knew where the investigation was going to go but we knew there would probably be subpoenas at some point, probably be requests for documents and interviews and that other issues would come up. We were trying to figure out okay, what in the president s mind would be okay and what wouldnt be okay. I just want to be clear. That determination of what is and isnt okay ultimately is something that is answered in a more profound and global sense than what the president does or does not allow although well see how this plays out as he considers what he is going to do next. Michael schmidt, great reporting as always. Thank you. Back in december, senator mark warner, advice of the Senate IntelligenceCommittee Gave a barn burner speech that seemed to come out of nowhere in which he warned the president not to the cross a red line by firing muler. Moments ago the top aide to that senator said when he delivered his red line speech to warn back in december, a lot of people asked why now, this is why. She linked to the story breaking from the New York Times we just discussed. I happened to speak to senator warner tonight just before that story broke. Senator, what do you think about Sarah Huckabee sanders saying is the white house has made the determination the president himself has the power to fire Robert Mueller . Well, this white house and this president seem to think he can in effect support some laws and ignore other laws. Im not the legal expert here. But i would actually agree with republican senator Lindsey Graham that if mr. Trump tried to fire mr. Mueller, that will be the beginning of the end of the trump presidency. The president also said this yesterday about the raid where he called it an attack on this country. I want you to take a listen and get your reaction. I have this witch hunt constantly going on for over 12 months now. And actually much more than that. You could say it was right after the won the nomination it started. That its a disgrace. Its frankly a real disgrace. Its an attack on our country in a true sense. Its an attack on what we all stand for. Do you think the raid was an attack on our country . Absolutely not. What this president doesnt seem to understand is that there is no one that is above the law including the president of the United States. I would remind the president that mr. Rosenstein who is his Deputy Attorney general longterm republican, mr. Wray, the fbi director, a trump appointee, throughout this whole investigation, mr. Mueller, a lifelong republican somehow the notion that it is being caused by political purposes, it is being caused because there are serious questions that need to be answered about Trump Campaign and affiliates, affiliation or collusion with russians and i think this investigation has to finish. I believe our Senate IntelligenceCommittee Investigation has to finish. And the American Public deserves the truth and what scares the dickens out of me is when the president basically depending on his mood wakes up and makes these in effect add whom nen broad based attacks against the integrity of the Justice Department and the fbi. That gets into very scary territory that might give license to some to say consequently, they could then cloos choose which laws they want to follow and which they dont. My fear is mr. Trump is trying to undermine it the Mueller Investigation and the integrity of our justice system. Is he succeeding . I believe amongst some of his allies who reinforce this message. Were getting into uncharted territory here. I worry. Were a nation ive never seen anything like this in my whole life. I know a lot of my republican colleagues have privately expressed real concern and consternation. My hope is for the sake of the country that was someone would rein this president back in and that he would not take the kind of inappropriate action as firing rosenstein or firing mueller which i believe would put us into a constitutional crisis. You just said the word privately to describe the concerns of our republican colleagues. Ive been monitoring public pronouncements today and largely from republicans theyve been essentialliquiv cal or we dont need to do anything because im confident theyll say he wont fire mueller. It wont happen. Dont worry about it. Do you think thats good enough . You know, i went out before the holidays before christmas and gave what i hoped was my red line speech that firing mueller, firing rosenstein, going off and pardoning family members or others would be a bridge too far. Most republican who have been on too far, as well. But we seem to be fast approaching that point. And my colleagues are going to need god forbid if we have this event to move past private conversations and take a public stand. I think all of us will as americans have to take a public stand and decide whether were going to continue to be a nation of laws. And that no one including the president of the United States is bobbit law and he cannot arbitrary stop a duly constituted investigation. But i can tell you from at least where i stand as a as vice chair of the Senate Intelligence committee there are a lot of questions that still need to be answered. Your counterparts over in the house Intelligence Committee who some critics have said are sort of conducting a counter investigation of the investigation, they this comes from robert costa of the west who says house intel chair devin nunes privately told several colleagues its time for house the gop to hold rosenstein and wray in contempt of congress should they refuse to hand over docs according to two people familiar with the discussions. What do you think of that . I think its fairly typical of the way the House Majority has operated. Frankly, outside the boundaries are of what most of us would view would be appropriate, obviously, not in any sense bipartisan, and im going to continue to say grace over what were trying to do on the senate side which is weve got to follow the facts, keep this effort bipartisan. And at the end of the day, this is about what happened or didnt happen not only. 2016 but in some of the aftermath and also how we make sure the American Public gets the truth because they deserve the truth. Senator mark warner of virginia, thanks for your time tonight. Jill winebanks, former watergate prosecutor, matt miller chief spokesperson at the Justice Department kund president obama. Matt, ill start with you. I want to zoom out for a second and just note or ask you how you feel about a news cycle thats driven about will the president act to interfere in the investigation into himself and into his allies. Yeah, its odd because in a way it gets framed as if theres some legitimate choice the president is facing as opposed to there being one acceptable choice which is allow the investigation to proceed to allow the rule of law to stand. And one which is to try to commit a crime and obstruct the investigation which is what hes trying to do. For people at the department of justice looking at this, you know, none of them are stupid. They see what the president is trying to do. If he fires the rosenstein they know exactly what hes trying to do. For him to try to you fire mueller, he may be able to do it but he will have to burn that building to the ground before he finds someone willing to carry out that kind of order. Jill, do you agree with that. I do. And ive seen this play out once before. Right. And it didnt work out so well pore president nixon. And i dont think it will work very well for him. I do think he has the authority to fire mueller. And he certainly does not have cause. So no one should be able to fire mueller unless he has done something that is cause. And there isnt any cause as of now so he should not be fired. And if the president is not guilty, he certainly is doing his very best to make us think he is by trying to shut this investigation down. So heres what seems more likely to me. This is a tweet from john harwood who is quoting roger stone on the record. Long time associate roger stone tells me he doesnt think trump will fire muler. He recommends he fire rosenstein and sessions and ininstructing to limit investigationings to collusion probe. Rosenstein he does have the authority to the fire whether it would be correct or proper or not, that seems more likely. Jill, do you view that as essentially the same as firing mueller . I do see it as the same. And yet, it does have a slight difference. But the result would end up being exactly the same and i think the American Public would react the same way. I think they will be outraged by this action. And again, if theres nothing to hide why is he trying to stop this investigation . Let it go forward. Let us find out and i do think the American People have a need to know what the president did or did not know. And when he did something, what he had in mind. So i think at some point we need to have a Public Disclosure of evidence whether thats through an indictment or through a report is up to the prosecutor tore determine. But i do think its important before we vote to know what has happened here. I really think that firing the attorney general or the Deputy Attorney general in order to get rid of mueller is the same thing because mueller still is appointed under a law that says he can only be fired for cause. So tell me what the cause is. There is none. Matt, rosenstein, when you see burn the building to the ground, i take it you view rosen tine as an equivalent position . What does that mean. Im thinking about the institutional players here and how they can prepare or act in advance of something crisis. Appoint a new attorney general someone like scott pruitt who would have immediate jurisdiction and could either fire mueller or shut the investigation down slowly. You might see mass resignations in that instance. If he were to fire rosenstein its more complicated. An acting Deputy Attorney general couldnt actually fire mueller. What happens is it moves down did the line. It goes next to the solicitor general. With everything i know about him, i dont think he would carry out such an order where he knows the president is trying to commit a crime by obstructing justice. Then it goes to the u. S. Attorneys. If you look at the u. S. Attorneys, a lot of them are longtime career prosecutors, some are people are respected partners at law if i weres. He may find someone eventually. I dont think these are peopl